


Breathing Room

by Fabular_Mr_Fox



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alcoholism, Anal Fingering, Angry Tony Stark, Apologies, Blow Jobs, Brooklyn, Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, Drunk Tony Stark, Dubiously Consensual Blow Jobs, F/M, Home Invasion, M/M, Machine Kink, Masturbation, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Semi-Public Sex, Squatter Bucky, Stalking, Steve Rogers doesn't respect other people's boundaries, Steve Rogers is overbearing, Tony really likes robots I guess, Vodka, author wish fulfillment scotch
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-02
Updated: 2016-12-07
Packaged: 2018-08-28 15:42:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8452129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fabular_Mr_Fox/pseuds/Fabular_Mr_Fox
Summary: The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend.





	1. Breathing Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the human equivalents of tactical weapons, these guys are pretty unsure of their own opinions.

Friday’s facial recognition started picking Barnes’ face out of crowds months ago. Tony knew the Winter Solider could have hidden if he wanted to—probably he  _ was _ hidden, from anything less sophisticated than Stark tech—which meant Tony was supposed to see him.

The first time it happened he called the sighting in, but all the ops team found was a couple of homeless vets under a bridge. He spent a week wondering if he’d programmed Friday too aggressively, if he’d made a mistake and sicced a strike team on some poor guy who happened to have Barnes’ cheekbones and build.

That’s why he didn’t call it in the second time. Self-doubt.

The third time, his doubts wavered. By four he knew what he was seeing, and wondered why the Soldier hadn’t made a move yet.

After sighting number five, he almost used the phone. Because if this was some Steve-powered surveillance plan, he had a highly-curated string of curse words for Cap. But if he used the phone for anything, he’d be playing right into Steve’s hands, and he wouldn’t do that. Not even with his parents’ murderer appearing in his peripheral vision.

So he let it go. Let it go so far it turned around on him and  _ he _ started hunting for  _ Barnes _ , who would let him trail for a few blocks before disappearing into the seething human mass of New York City. Friday should have been able to follow him, but couldn’t. Tony could only keep his eyes on Barnes if Barnes would let him. And he did, increasingly, until one bitter afternoon Tony found himself in the industrial sprawl of eastern Greenpoint, near Queens, standing in front of a half-converted warehouse.

He wasn’t in the suit—Barnes had taken him on the fucking Subway. The G, for Christ’s sake. He wished he were in the full get-up. Fewer people would have stared if he had flown.

He didn’t know which buzzer he was supposed to press, so he slammed his fist against all of them at once.

#

“Nice place,” says Tony, braced in the doorway. “If you like shitholes.”

The interior walls of the squat are unfinished. He can see the toilet and the shower through the crosshatch of boards but from the case of bottled water and the bucket in the corner, he figures the utilities aren’t on. A mattress, bare except for a space blanket, is shoved into the farthest corner of the room, with sightlines to the door and window: the most defensible position.

Barnes stands at the living room window—closest exit—silhouetted by anemic winter light. “I do.”

Tony is surprised by how softly he speaks. “For the human equivalent of a tactical weapon, you sound pretty unsure of your own opinion.”

The noise that Barnes makes doesn’t initially register as laughter. In fact, it barely registers at all. “Opinions are new,” he says. “I didn’t have them for a while.”     

“So I hear.” Tony still hasn’t moved from the doorway. Barnes still hasn’t moved from the window.

“Or judgement,” says Barnes.

“Are you actually trying to apologize?” Incredulity makes the pitch of Tony’s voice rise. He can’t bring himself to add  _ for killing my parents. _

“I can’t," he says. “But I have to try.” He opens his posture, underscoring the words. Outlined against the low, pearlescent clouds outside the window, Tony sees what Barnes has skillfully hidden since he first appeared in Friday’s robotic sights. Under the sleeve of his sweatshirt, his left arm is whole. Silver fingers, articulate past the point of human grace, alight on the windowsill.

“Captain Jingo found somebody to fix that for you?”

Barnes shrugs. Tony imagines his shoulders, underneath the fleece: one corded with muscle, one scarred where flesh merges with mechanics. “He doesn’t know I’m gone.”

“Oh, so you just left a hologram behind? Or some pillows bunched up under your blanket?”

“He thinks I’m still in deep freeze. But I only went in for a few days. Then I ran.”

Glossing over questions like “where,” and “why,” Tony jumps straight to “You  _ lied _ to him? You know that’s going to break his heart.”

Barnes shrugs again, but turns his face away. When he speaks, his words fog the windowpane. “I just needed…breathing room.”

Tony can’t help it: he adds a tick mark to the little scoreboard in his head. In his real mental space, not in the retinal display where he keeps his news and stock tickers, his texts, his reminders and alerts. He won’t even trust the running Cap v. Tony tally to Friday. And it’s not that his allegiance shifts—he has no allegiance left. But a seed of empathy germinates in him, sending out the smallest root.

He steps across the threshold, and closes the door as he comes.

#

“Do you have anything to drink?” he asks, knowing that he shouldn’t. But he needs an excuse to stay here, to speak with marginal civility to the man—machine? Monster?—who murdered his parents. An excuse beyond the uncomfortable bloom of warmth behind his sternum, mixed pride and vindication, that Barnes left Cap in blissful ignorance and came to Tony Stark.

That’s what he likes about alcohol: no matter what he does, it gives him an excuse. 

Barnes opens the window and brings a bottle in off the fire escape. He unscrews the cap and takes a long pull. His throat is gray with dirt and stubble. When he’s done, he holds the bottle out to Tony, who doesn’t come closer.

“I thought you guys couldn’t get drunk,” he says. “Is this some kind of superbooze?”

Barnes tilts the bottle to read the label. “It’s Moskovskaya.”

“So what, you drink it for the taste?”

Barnes shrugs, and slams back another pint of the stuff. If Tony doesn’t take it from him soon, there won’t be any left.

“Gimme,” he says, and takes another step closer.

The bottle is shockingly cold against his palm. But the temperature differential in the squat is so small the glass doesn’t sweat or gather frost. Tony shoves his free hand deep into the pocket of his jacket, balling his fist against the fleece lining. He feels vulnerable, one hand full, the other tucked away. So he stands up straighter, puts his weight deep into one hip, and slugs down enough vodka that in fifteen minutes he won’t care about the cold or the assassin who’s sharing the bottle with him.

#

“You followed me,” he says, because he isn’t going to stand here in silence while he waits to be drunk.

“Yes,” says Barnes.

“Why? Just to say you’re sorry?” The vodka is so cold it hurts his teeth. Outside it has begun to snow. Tiny, icy pellets tap against the windowpane. “Did you think I would forgive you? You killed my  _ mom _ .” He wants to hit something. He wants to cry. He doesn’t do either, just glares at Barnes through the beginnings of a buzz.

B arnes, for his part, isn’t cowed; he looks almost reassured. “Your father too. Don’t forget.”

Tony takes another drink. The bottle is almost empty now.

“He said none of it was my fault.” Barnes doesn’t means Howard. “He told me not to apologize.” The windowsill buckles under his metal grip, giving up splinters. “I’m done letting people tell me what to do.”

If he’s really here to atone, Tony could ask the Winter Soldier to kneel, lick his shoes, maybe could kill him where he stands without a fight. But he’s here  _ despite Steve _ , that righteous prick, and thinking of it, all of Tony’s anger shifts. Steve wants to take on Bucky’s burdens, fine. He’s already stolen Howard’s love, the loyalty of the Avengers. Let him have this, too: let him be the man who murdered Tony’s mother.

So instead of whatever retribution Barnes expects, and because the vodka has kicked in, he says, “Is that why you haven’t cut your fucking hair yet?” and makes a tight fist in the offending mop, shaking Barnes’ head back and forth.

Barnes throws an elbow—the metal one—and Tony gets a gauntlet up just in time to block him. He’s been working on smaller, faster modular units, and keeps one on him at all times. The armor blooms across his palm. Metal crashes and squeals. Sparks fly from their points of contact. It’s almost playful, but it sounds like war.

They stand still, facing one another in front of the window. Tony tightens his grip, his own fingers on the inside of the gauntlet, the gauntlet against Barnes’ arm. Rebuilt since Barnes came out of deep freeze, it’s lighter now, more mobile, stronger. Vibranium, Tony thinks.

“T’Challa?” he says, squeezing Barnes’ metal wrist. His palm grinds on the joint. “Is that where Steve took you? Smart. You would have been safe in Wakanda. You should have stayed.”

The servos in Barnes’ arm whine as he yanks Tony off-balance.  The arm can’t break the gauntlet’s hold, but the gauntlet doesn’t enhance anything below Tony’s wrist. Barnes could drag him like a cowboy with his foot caught in the stirrup. He pulls back, braces against the force of high-tech metal powered by Barnes’ building frustration. It feels like they might fight after all, despite the strange détente they have so far maintained. 

“Are you going to do it?” Tony asks, voice tight with the effort of holding out against Barnes.

Barnes isn’t even breathing hard. “Do what?”

“Apologize.” Tony spits the word between his teeth.

There is a breathless moment, and then Barnes gets a funny look on his face: a testing, sly expression, laced with abandon.

Tony knows that look. It is the dawning realization that you can do whatever you want, and nobody cares. It’s the face he sees every morning in the mirror. But unaccountability kindles wonder in Barnes’ eyes, while lately it has only filled Tony with despair. 

“What?” he asks.

Barnes  _ smiles _ , for god’s sake, close-mouthed and rueful, and drops to his knees in front of Tony. His head hangs between his shoulders, his metal arm torqued above his head but loose now in Tony’s grip. 

When Barnes lifts his face and meets Tony’s eyes, Tony is expecting...words, at least. Tears, bliss, Catholic-grade self-abasement in pursuit of absolution.

He is not expecting the hot pressure of Barnes’ open mouth on the fly of his 501s. 

“Jesus,” he says, and Barnes presses harder, spit soaking through the denim. His free hand comes up off the floor and slides beneath Tony’s jacket, beneath the hem of his t-shirt and UnderArmour. His palm passes over Tony’s skin, rough with callouses and freezing cold. It traces the groove between Tony’s abdominal muscles, finds the curve of his ribs and comes back down, following the ridge of his hipbone into the divot where his tailbone tucks between his glutes. The far edge of Barnes’s hand, the tempered blade Tony has seen strike sideways into vulnerable throats, comes to rest against the back seam of his Levis with suggestive pressure. Barnes squeezes Tony’s ass, pushing Tony more firmly into the heat of his mouth. The cold backs of Tony’s fly buttons press against his cock. He’s getting hard and he hates it. 

Barnes lets his ass go, backs off, and starts to undo the top button of his jeans.

“Stop,” says Tony, and Barnes doesn’t just stop, he  _ freezes _ . Like an animal afraid of a predator. Like, Tony realizes, a soldier given a command. Startled guilt makes his fine hairs stand up, turns his skin into a conductor. Or is that arousal?

But if he gives Barnes an order, he’s no better than the men who sent the Winter Soldier to kill his parents. No better than Steve Rogers, either. And Tony Stark has spent a lot of time, energy, emotion, and cash trying to be better than Steven fucking Rogers. 

Still. He’s done weird bondage shit with Pepper, and it was all right but not his thing. None of it ever made his cock jump like Barnes pulling back, Barnes freezing. And now, Barnes is sitting there, trembling, spit shining on his lips, shaking from some inner struggle.

He’s here to atone. Tony could make him do anything.

So, a compromise:

“Why don’t you use your teeth?” It isn’t quite an order. But he doesn’t ask nicely, either.

Barnes blinks, breathing hard, and slowly his posture loses its panicked rigidity. The glassiness goes out of his eyes, replaced by the dawning realization that Tony has left him a choice.

His hand flexes against Tony’s waist, indecisive. Then, it drops to the floor and Barnes angles his jaw to take the edge of Tony’s fly in his teeth. The buttons come undone with one jerk of his chin, and Tony’s cock bows into the frigid air, still half-trapped in his jeans and boxer-briefs. Barnes mouths it, opening wide enough to trace the silhouette with his teeth. Even through the fabric, the threat of them makes Tony’s breath catch, makes his asshole tight with fear. Or is that arousal? Why is it so hard to tell the difference?

Barnes pulls the front of Tony’s boxer briefs open, but he’s still trapped in his jeans. Barnes shows no inclination to raise his free hand; he’s soaking Tony’s jeans and underpants with spit, tearing the fabric, his teeth clicking against the metal buttons of Tony’s fly. He is utterly silent as he struggles. The wet fabric is turning icy cold wherever the air touches it, but it’s hot wherever Barnes’ breath and lips and tongue make contact.

Still, he can’t get the fucking Levi’s out of the way, can’t get Tony’s cock out, and he won’t raise his fucking hand to make things easier. Tony wonders if he’s being punished for his earlier misstep, if this tease is Barnes saying  _ don’t tell me what to do. _ He decides he doesn’t give a shit, and grabs Barnes’ hair again, hauling his head far enough back so there’s room for Tony’s hand, room for Tony to pull himself out into the open. And  _ Christ _ it’s cold, for half a second, before Barnes tears out of his grip--there’s still hair tangled in his fingers--and then Barnes’ nose is against his belly and more importantly,  _ Barnes’ mouth is on his cock _ . 

“ _ Shit, _ ” he says, knees weak enough he staggers and throws his arms out for balance. He doesn’t realize he’s let go of Barnes’ metal arm until it catches him and keeps him from falling. Barnes holds the small of his back until he steadies, then slides down so he’s holding Tony’s ass. He couldn’t pull away now if he wanted too, though when Barnes’ teeth graze him he instinctively jerks back into the non-negotiable curve of vibranium fingers.

He has a flash-fantasy of those fingers pressed inside of him, cold enough to burn then heating up as Barnes finger-fucks him; the soft hiss of servos, the slide of steel on skin.

“Jesus  _ fuck _ .” Tony sags into the supporting hand, presses his ass hard against it, and Barnes presses back, bruising him, forcing Tony’s cock as deep down his throat as it will go. His nostrils flare, but Tony knows there can’t be room for air to pass. He grinds into Barnes’ face, hears the scrape of stubble on denim, watches a string of drool drip from Barnes’ chin on to the unfinished floor. 

If Barnes is going to trap him like this, he can pay back with fucking interest. 

The gauntlet doesn’t fall on Barnes’ head hard enough to injure him, but Tony doesn’t pull all the weight. It lands hard and solid enough he feels the impact through Barnes’ jaw. He closes his fingers around Barnes’ skull--just as fragile as any other human’s--and holds him still. They are pressed so close there is barely room to move. Tony’s thrusts are fast and short, mechanical, until his abs are burning and his legs are shaking and he has to stop, roll his hips slowly, grinding down into Barnes’ mouth and throat until he’s sure they’re both black and blue from the rub of bone-on-bone.

Barnes’ eyes are tearing up, going glassy again. This time because he’s choking, suffocating on Tony’s cock. Tony wonders how long Barnes can keep this up without a breath. He wonders if Barnes will fight for air or surrender. He wonders if he can keep his shit together long enough to find out. 

Barnes tightens his hold on Tony’s ass and finally-- _ finally _ \--makes a sound: a wet, brief grunt that forces its way past Tony’s cock. Tony swears. He’s a nanometer away from finishing but he can’t get any deeper, can’t even move, and Barnes isn’t going to give him an inch. They’ll be at this impasse forever.

Then Barnes swallows around him. His eyes are wide, and he’s on the edge of panic, and he swallows again. The slick movement of his throat on Tony’s cock, as his muscles spasm in airless desperation, pull Tony’s orgasm from his thighs, his balls, the base of his spine. He feels it gather in the hollow of his body where he had imagined Barnes’ metal fingers curling, and the memory of that is what gets him. He has to let go of Barnes’ head to keep from crushing his skull as he comes.

Freed, Barnes gags and reels back, coughing. Strings of come and spit hang from his chin. His face is red and streaked with tears. Every ragged breath catches wetly in his chest.

When he says “I’m sorry,” his voice is raw.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Erm, I meant this to be a standalone, but accidentally chapter two'ed. Updates will be sporadic. Comments appreciated, as they keep me sane and reassured.


	2. Scenarios

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He finishes his fourth scotch. He justifies a fifth because that vodka was a long time ago, and he has consumed a truly staggering amount of takeout in the interim. Plus Friday has reminded him, every thirty minutes, to drink a glass of water. Besides, he’s a fucking alcoholic.

 

Back at the tower, Tony almost texts Pepper. He has not let himself think about texting Pepper for a long time. The first layer of his reasoning runs something like, “I’m trying to respect her space,” in that voice that insufferably understanding exes use when they want to make sure you know their counterpart is far more miserable than they are.

The second layer down, things get bald-faced and ugly: If she doesn’t want to talk to him, he doesn’t want to talk to her. He doesn’t need her anyway. What would she do? Pity him? Condescend? He doesn’t need that from her.

Way deep down, at the heart of the matter: he really does respect her space. She really is better off without him. He fucking needs her, but he won’t inflict his neediness on her capability. Because she is  _ so _ capable. He should’ve quit the Avengers long ago and put her in the suit. Even odds they wouldn’t be in this mess now over the Accords.

So he pours another drink, and he doesn’t text Pepper.

He thinks about calling his therapist. Yes, Tony Stark  _ has _ been in therapy. Usually by court order, but a little bit with Pepper and a little bit because the last thing Pepper said to him before she left was, “you need help, and I can’t give it to you.”

But he’s found, by and large, he prefers to be alone in his own head. It’s productive. Maybe not in a good way, but in a familiar way. He’s the only person he’ll really admit his own flaws to.

So he goes into his lab, puts on Black Sabbath, and he doesn’t call his therapist.

With  _ Paranoid _ up loud and a soldering iron in his hand, with strings and strings of code on screens around the room, a bottle of Port Charlotte at his elbow and one of his modular gauntlets gutted on the workshop table, he sinks into a semi-conscious flow state. Thoughts slide over the surface of his brain, never quite penetrating. Pepper got him into yoga sweats a couple of times, but  _ this _ is his real meditation. 

_ You did something fucking stupid today. You’ve been doing something stupid for a while now. If you had called Barnes in weeks ago this never would have happened. Why did you let this happen? _

_ You’re lonely.  _

_ If you changed your life you could have Pepper back. Is changing worth it? You could try. Run this scenario: you are no longer Iron Man. Are you bored? Yes. You feel worthless. Is Pepper worth your worthlessness?  _

_ Wrong question. Try something open-ended. How can you be Iron Man and also someone Pepper makes a life with? Do you want to “make a life” with anyone? How do you envision “making a life?”  _

_ Trash TV. Italian night. Art galleries. Sex. Halo grudge matches. Wine tours. More sex: the comfortable, familiar kind. Restaurant week. Couples kickboxing class. Weird sex that requires gadgets and Googling. Arguments about scheduling. Arguments about politics. Arguments about the toilet seat. More sex. Big spoon. Little spoon. Waking up together. Catching up on email before bed. Back rubs after nightmares (you both have nightmares). Falling asleep with someone you trust. _

_ You liked Pepper-- _ still  _ like Pepper--because she didn’t want to be protected. Not in the normal sense anyway. Insane criminals are excluded from this analysis. She handles her shit. Handles  _ your _ shit. She could take you apart. You like someone on your level. Couldn’t be happy with anything less. _

_ It’s why you were comfortable with the Avengers. Because you never had to dumb it down, put any of it on mute. It didn’t matter if they didn’t get it; you didn’t get them half the time. But you were all at the top of your game, and their confidence meant you could relax. _

_ Run this scenario: You could use the phone. _

_ What would you say? Something stupid, because you would never admit to Rogers exactly how much you miss it all.  _

_ You wish it was Bruce who had left you the phone. You could have this conversation with him, because he’s like Pepper and he never takes the bullshit seriously. Sees straight through it. Unlike Pepper, he lets you get away with it. _

_ But it’s Steve who left the phone, and he insists on straight talking. You’re never going to be able to look at that all-American jawline without remembering it’s your dad who’s responsible, it’s your dad that Steve wants you to be, and Steve who is your father’s proudest accomplishment, not you. You’ll never be able to talk straight to Steve Rogers. _

_ And because your old team is all in the palm of Steve’s hand, you can’t go to Bruce, you can’t go to any of them. It would be like going straight to Steve. _

Tony stabs his soldering iron into the guts of his gauntlet. It flexes, fingers curling in, like it’s trying to make a fist, trying to clutch at something.

Maybe it’s because he’s thinking of Steve. Maybe it’s because of...what happened earlier. But Tony flashes on Siberia, on the tearing, nauseating feeling as Barnes clawed at the arc reactor, on the smell of hot metal and burnt hair when Tony sliced off his arm. The look of shock on Barnes’ pale face, turning it almost green.

But Barnes hadn’t torn the reactor out, in the end. Steve had cleaved it in two.

If you wanted to get melodramatic about it--why the hell not, after three generous helpings of Bruichladdich--Steve Rogers, Captain America, had broken Tony’s metaphorical heart. With a shield made by Howard Stark. 

Jesus, his therapist would have  _ loved _ this shit. 

#

He finishes his fourth scotch. He justifies a fifth because that vodka he drank with Barnes was a long time ago, and he has consumed a truly staggering amount of khao nah ped in the interim. The ruins of his takeout, crammed in the trash, have filled the lab with the smell of ginger and fish sauce. Plus Friday has reminded him, every thirty minutes, to drink a glass of water. Besides, he’s a fucking alcoholic.

He drops the soldering iron onto the workshop table with a thunk. His hands aren’t steady enough for fine circuit work anymore. Instead he starts testing the resistance and fluidity of the gauntlet’s joints: manipulating the fingers and the palm to make sure he hasn’t jammed anything, make sure there’s no catches or burrs or purely mechanical issues. 

The gauntlet is as pliable in his hand as another willing human’s would be, though it’s cold and makes soft noises as it bends, like a knife against a whetstone. He curls it into a fist, inside his own hand. Like the drunk asshole he is, he holds it out and gives it a fistbump. When he lets it go, the gauntlet falls open. LIke it is offering itself for shake, or to hold.

He almost does it. He could try to tell himself it’s as a joke. He could feel a little bit of comfort, pressing palm to palm, and beat himself up about it later.

But then he thinks of Barnes’, and the uncompromising grip of that metal arm, and his cock twitches.

Curious-- _ just because he’s curious- _ -he tugs his sweatpants down. He’d chucked the 501s into a corner of the foyer as soon as he got out of the elevator. Craning his neck, he can see the edge of a purple bruise just above the curve of one ass cheek. He’s pretty sure if he bothered to look in a mirror there’d be a giant purple handprint there.

Gingerly, he puts his own hand over the spot and presses. It aches. He bites the inside of his lip.

“Jesus, Barnes,” he says--into silence, because  _ Paranoid _ is finished and he didn’t bother to queue up anything else. The lab is quiet, except for the whirr of cooling fans, the tick of metal as it shifts in changing temperatures.

Hot metal cooling. Cold metal, warming up.

Fuck.

He looks down at the gauntlet, lying open on the table, and doesn’t let himself think about what he’s doing, not beyond its immediate utility. A few swift keystrokes and the gauntlet clicks open for his hand. At the pressure of his knuckles on the sensors inside, the unit closes over his palm.

Ridiculously, he looks around. He’s alone in the lab. Still, Tony hasn’t felt this furtive about jerking off since he was thirteen. 

Experimentally, he cups his balls, strokes his dick.

It’s cold. It feels strange. It isn’t exactly what he wants, and he  _ knows _ that, he knows  _ exactly  _ what he wants, but he’s got to fucking work up to it, all right? Jesus, what is he  _ thinking? _

_ Don’t think _ . Because he’d stopped, in Barnes’ squat. His thoughts had blown straight out of his head, because if he had been thinking he would have fought.  _ Don’t think and don’t hold back. He can take it. He can take you. _

His hips jerk out of reflex, pushing his cock against cold metal. He slides his gauntleted hand down between his legs, rubs the firm spot behind his balls with one hard, smooth fingertip. With his uncovered hand he pulls on himself a couple times, getting harder and harder against the calloused, hot skin of his palm. He puts his thumb over the tip of his cock, makes a couple of circles in the slick of precum gathered there. He covers the bruise on his ass with his own metal hand, squeezing hard even though it hurts, remembering.

Is he brave enough for this now? Stupid enough?

He puts two metal fingers in his mouth, letting spit gather on the sleek surface. When saliva drips down his wrist, onto the skin of his forearm, he leans forward. Lying across his workspace in between pliers and screwdrivers and magnifying glasses, dirty tumblers and plastic forks, he reaches back and slips those two slippery metal fingers into his ass.

They are warmer than in his imagination--from his mouth, from the mild temperature in the lab. But the pressure is right, the solidity. He hasn’t done this in a while, and two at once is too much, but so was everything about Barnes this afternoon.

_ Don’t think _ , he reminds himself. If he thinks about what he did, or why, he’s going to lose his hard-on.  _ Don’t analyze. Don’t run this scenario. _

He twists his wrist, pulling his palm in a spiral around his cock, drawing his foreskin back, then pulling it down again, slick and tight. He remembers the heat of Barnes’ mouth, the spasm of his throat, the cold grip of his fingers, the flash of need, the hunger for those fingers inside him like his own fingers are now. 

He thinks of Pepper’s tongue, the sound of her hands slipping in her spit against his skin. He couldn’t...they couldn’t  _ both _ have their mouths on him at the same time, but what if...He could have his cock in Barnes’ mouth, and his mouth on Pepper’s cunt, and Barnes could fuck him with his fingers and he could have his hands on Pepper’s breasts--

Come spatters the floor. Tony’s weight settles onto the table suddenly, shifting tools and trash. The edge of the table cuts into his hips but he can’t stand yet; his legs are shaking.

For one warm, single moment, he manages not to think about what he just imagined. Then he’s standing straight--or as straight as he can with so much scotch in him--and stumbling away from the worktable, from the wet spot on the floor, as if moving further from the physical space will get him away from his own fucking mind.

He crashes out the lab door and trips, his sweatpants only halfway on. He reeks of drunk sweat. He hates the smell of himself, the feeling of being his own brain in his own skin.

When he remembers he’s still wearing the gauntlet--torn from its output cable in his panic--he slams his fist into the release clasp so hard his knuckles split. The thing falls to the floor outside the elevator and that’s where he leaves it, palm up and open. He can see it on the security monitors when Friday shows him the feed. He doesn’t go back down to the lab for a week.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It didn't really hit me until after I wrote this that there's a track on Paranoid called "Hand of Doom."
> 
> I ALMOST USED IT AS A TITLE BUT I HAVE SOME SCRAPS OF DIGNITY LEFT.


	3. Proxy Server

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He can imagine where Barnes’ hand is. And if he doesn’t look down, it doesn’t have to be Barnes’ hand.

_ You’re falling. You’re falling. You’re falling. You’re-- _

Every muscle in his body flinches against the impact. It tears him from sleep sweating, tense, and fighting for breath.

Hypnagogic jerk. Unexplained neurologic phenomenon sometimes associated with caffeine, stress, and irregular sleep cycles.

But the feeling of falling? Explicable. The knowledge that he will die when he strikes the ground, if he ever does? Familiar. The huge, sucking hole of the void cinching tighter and tighter between his plummeting body and any hope of dying on home soil? No hope of friends at his funeral, of a burial at all? Just his body, falling forever through alien space? Yeah, he’s pretty solid on those.

He pulls a painful breath into his lungs, reaches for the glass on the bedside table, and freezes. Friday. 

She’s in lockdown mode. Why is she in lockdown mode? She should be chattering to him, soothing, like he programmed her to do when he wakes up in the middle of the night, heart rate high and blood pressure up. It’s better than nothing. Better than waking with no warm body in the bed; no half-sleeping, sympathetic murmur; no soft hands and stretching muscle to curl into. 

Friday should have alerted him when she went into lockdown. There are systems in place for things like this.  But she’s just a small presence in his peripheral, scrolling terse updates on perimeter security. No breach reported, but something has her spooked. Someone must have tried to--

Speaking aloud seems impossibly vulnerable, in the darkness, so he taps the pad on the bedside table to bring up the lights. Nothing happens. The blackout curtains cut all the glow from the cityscape, and the room is so lightless he feels like he is suffocating.

He is suddenly convinced there is another person in the room with him. And, irrationally, he is sure they can see him, while he’s completely blind. 

From anywhere in his own home, he can call some iteration of the suit and it will arrive in under five seconds. But alone in the darkness, he isn’t sure five seconds will be enough. There’s--probably--only one person who can get into Stark Tower largely undetected, into Tony’s fucking  _ bedroom _ without security or Friday or  _ somebody _ noticing. 

He almost feels like he needs to reassure his AI;  _ it’s alright, babe, you did your best. But he’s the Winter Soldier, and we’re fucked. _

“Barnes,” he says, into the black.

He doesn’t hear footsteps, doesn’t hear the rustle of cloth or the soft sigh of servos. The only reason he can tell Barnes has moved is the air shifts against his skin and changes temperature. The kind of thing no normal human notices unless they’ve been deprived of all their other senses. The hair on his arms stands up. 

Tony has prepared himself to die before. But that was  _ his _ choice, and he knew how it would happen. He didn’t like it, but it was sure as hell better than the pants-shitting terror he is very quietly experiencing at present.

“You didn’t text me,” he says, and the joke comes out brittle. When he doesn’t get a response, he wonders if maybe this  _ isn’t _ Barnes, but some other, unrealized horror the universe has decided to visit upon him in his longest, darkest night of the soul. It never rains but it fucking pours, y’know? He has to fight the urge to giggle, because if he starts that shit he might not stop.

“Barnes?” he says again, and his voice shakes. “It is you, right? Can I get a light?”

The sound of a tiny clip releasing in the dark--not a grenade, too soft to be a grenade, right?--and then a faint  _ crunch _ . Tony jumps. Green-yellow light spreads through the plastic tube of a glow stick. Not the cute neon kind teenage ravers use; this is the heavy duty shit you see in soldier’s webbing. It illuminates Barnes’ face from below. When he removes his night-vision goggles, his face looks monochromatic and ill.

Though, even in the muted daylight of his squat, Barnes had looked pretty monochromatic and ill. Until he was choking, red in the face, pink mouth hanging open--

Tony makes a fist in his bedclothes. “What are you doing here?”

“You’re the only one,” he says.

“What?”

“Who followed me. Who talked to me.”

“You mean you’ve been stalking other idiots and trying to suck their dicks too?”

Barnes doesn’t even have the decency--humanity?--to blush. Or maybe the weird yellow light of the glow stick cancels it out. Then, Tony’s sure he isn’t blushing because he says, deadpan, “Do you want me to do it again?” There is no humor in it, but nor is their desire. Maybe a little bit of desperation.

“ _ What?  _ No!” He can’t really get away without crawling further onto the bed, and Barnes is already crouched on the floor between his knees. He feels trapped.

Barnes doesn’t crowd him, though; in fact, he falls back on his haunches and stares at the floor. “Shit.”

The curse sounds strange, like he doesn’t quite remember if this is how he’s supposed to use it. Tony doesn’t help him out.

Finally, Barnes looks up and says, “How do I make this better?”

“Oh, hell no.” Tony  _ does _ laugh now, but he does it in lieu of screaming, or tears. “I am not fucking  _ telling you _ how to atone for  _ killing my parents _ .”

Barnes looks wounded, but nods his head. “I’m sorry. I just...it’s hard. I want...I want to make things right.”

“Yeah? And this is how you do it? Who else have you been stalking like me? T’Challa? Nat?”

“T’Challa forgave me, before. Natasha...understands.”

“Jesus,” said Tony. “So I’m the asshole, again. Fuck.”

Barnes stands so fast Tony’s breath goes with him. “I should leave.”

“Wait.”

It comes out before Tony knows he’s going to say it. He has one of those moments where, instinctively, his mind reaches for Ctrl-Z, only to remember half a nanosecond too late that this is meatspace, and there is no undo.

Barnes waits, with that same eerie stillness Tony remembers from the squat. Like he is listening with every neuron for an order.

“Calm the fuck down,” says Tony. “At ease. Whatever.”

Barnes’ concession is an exhalation of breath. 

“You know what?” says Tony. “Forget about it. You can go. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“You’re lonely.” Not a question. No sympathy. Just a monotone statement.  _ That is what you were thinking _ .

“You talk like a fucking robot.”

“I was a fucking robot. Still am. “ He flexes his metallic arm. Tony feels nauseous. “Hard habit to break.”

“But you’re trying.”

“I’m here.”

“It ain’t helping, soldier.” He doesn’t mean breaking the habit. 

“You miss somebody.” As Barnes loses himself in thought, considering the problem, the stiffness leaves in his posture. When he hits on a possibility, it comes back. “Steve?”

Tony just looks at him, until he breaks and cuts his eyes to one side.

“Your team?” he says, with less wrongly-placed conviction. 

Point, but not  _ the _ point. Tony doesn’t answer.

“Who?” asks Barnes, looking more like a kid about to cry than a cold-blooded Hydra assassin. 

“Why?” is what Tony finally says. 

“I can find them for you. I’m good at finding things.”

With the implication that usually, once those things are found, they are terminated with extreme prejudice. “Yeah, well I could find her too. But she doesn’t want to see me.”

Barnes’ smile, when it comes, is half a beat too late. Tony can  _ watch _ his brain process emotions, render them into an expression. The lag is eerie in someone who can kill so fast his hands blur. “So? She doesn’t have to.”

#

The High Line at night is like something out of a high-budget Netflix dystopia. A light-polluted sky fluoresces between steel-glass buildings shaped like tumors. Every window blazes from within, showcasing Chelsea’s exhibitionist new money.

Tony comes in for a silent landing amidst bare magnolia trees, touching down exactly at the coordinates Barnes sent him. The park is closed, and empty for at least fifty yards in both directions--he sweeps it to be sure. Even if someone had a sightline, odds are they wouldn’t spot him, or know who he was if they did.

Every iteration of the suit is designed to evade infrared and radar, but this one is matte black, the arc reactor obscured, every identifying feature elided. This is a suit without an ego, a suit for doing dirty work. It is a suit that erases Iron Man completely.

It only took Barnes six hours to send him these coordinates, but by then the sun was up and Tony was finally asleep. Now that he’s landed, he wonders where he’s supposed to look, what he’s supposed to find.

Before he figures it out, a silhouette obscures the streetlights above Tenth Avenue. There is no sound of feet in soil, no whisper of dry grass, as the Winter Soldier slips from the guard rail into the prairie garden lining the path.  Barnes steps onto the grille, then the concrete, until he and Tony are face-to-face. Tony raises the visor, drops the helmet. February scrapes his skin. It’s like looking in a mirror, now, when he stares at Barnes: black tac gear, pallid face hovering in the dark like a cheap Halloween mask. 

“Great place for a date,” says Tony.

Barnes doesn’t laugh, and Tony’s glad. Humor has become a hated stress reflex that gets him into trouble more often than it helps.

But Barnes isn’t angry, either. He’s staring past Tony, toward the gallery district. Light slides over his eyes as they track left to right, flicker back, track again. Tony resists the urge to look over his shoulder. Penitent or not, he doesn’t trust Barnes in his blind spot.

“Twenty-three thirty,” says Barnes, gaze fixing on some distant point. “Right on time.”

“You learned her schedule?” asks Tony, still without turning. “In six hours? Did you waterboard the maid?”

“Surveillance footage,” says Barnes. His focus shifts to the foreground, and a small, pained flinch in the tired skin around his eyes belies his brusqueness. “You can see her apartment in the background of a couple different cameras.”

Tony doesn’t push it and ask how he got access to the files. Instead, he finally turns around. “What am I looking for?”

“Two o’clock. About three blocks away. Sixth floor loft. You’ll need the visor, for the distance.”

He closes his helmet. It takes him a minute to hone in on the apartment Barnes has singled out. By the time he finds it, radiant heat inside the helmet is starting to sear the frost-burnt skin on his face and ears. That’s what it is, he knows, because it’s fucking six degrees outside, and Tony Stark doesn’t  _ blush _ . 

Pepper is face down on a yoga mat in her living room, knees tucked beneath her, arms outstretched. She’s surrounded by beautiful art, tasteful furniture, warm wood, rough stone, recessed lights. Tony wants to fill in smells, sounds, music, but he hesitates, because he isn’t sure what Pepper might be like in her own home, all alone. What did she cook tonight? Because she would have. He was always the one who ordered in. There are candles on the dining table. Scented? Maybe. Probably rosemary, or sage. Her candles had always looked strange in Stark Tower, flickering amidst sheet glass, chrome, and touch screens. 

As he’s wondering, slotting details into place and then abandoning them, the tendons in her arms shift and she comes up into downward dog. Tony doesn’t remember names for all the poses, but he remembers this one. He remembers it was always the point when he stopped pretending to pay attention to whatever was on his screen and just started nakedly staring. 

Pepper half-lifts, her shoulder blades gliding beneath her skin, spine making a right angle at her hips. She drops and jumps back, feet landing lightly at the full extension of her legs. She pauses to breathe, stabilizing, then lowers herself slowly to the floor. Muscles in her arms cord. When she’s barely an inch from the mat, she presses up again, lifting her chest and chin like a sphinx. 

He zooms in.

The flat of her breastbone shows a faint shadow in the center, between the small swells of her breasts pressed against the neckline of her sports bra. Cropped at the knee, her sweatpants show the clean definition of her calves, and cling around the flexing muscles of her thighs. Her bare back glows in the warm, low light, the groove of her spine deep between tense lats. The soles of her feet face up, clean from the shower. She always showered before she did her yoga--it got her muscles warm.

_ There’s a water shortage you know _ , he’d said once.  _ Sex would be more environmentally friendly. _

It made her feel guilty, instead of making her laugh. He’d spent the next week designing a low-flow, high-pressure shower head for the master bathroom, and then subsidized its mass production and distribution to every household in the five boroughs.

She exhales. The detail of her ribs contracting is so crisp on his screen he forgets he isn’t in the room. The armature of her bones begins to move again. Her hips lift, and the motion rolls through her ankles and the tops of her feet and then her toes, until she’s back where she started, in downward dog. 

Tony’s starting to remember he’s not in the room with her now, because his dick is uncomfortably hard inside the suit. 

“Fuck,” he says. It shouldn’t be audible--this suit is silent. Not just its jets and its joints, but its systems, too. It doesn’t project his voice. But Barnes is a super soldier and an assassin and who knows what else, and suddenly Tony feels a pressure on his front.

He can imagine where Barnes’ hand is. And if he doesn’t look down, it doesn’t have to be Barnes’ hand.

There’s a sliding panel there. It isn’t sexy. It’s supposed to let him take a piss. The first iteration of the suit, when he came home from Afghanistan, didn’t have one; he just wasn’t thinking. He figured he would wear a fucking diaper, or put a catheter in the suit, though neither seemed appealing.

It was Pepper who said “Just put a fly in it, Tony,” with a note of distaste that implied suspicion about the modification’s other likely utilities. Pepper, before Stane and Vanko and Hammer and Killian, before the Avengers in New York, D.C., Sokovia: when she was his secretary and he was an idiot.

He’d put in the panel. He’d maybe thought about how she could use it, because even then the way she smiled made him itch. But the suit drove her crazy, and not in a good way, even once he started driving her crazy out of it. So he never asked her to try.

There’s no way Barnes can know that. 

Tony opens the panel.

#

It’s different, this time. Because Tony isn’t (that) drunk. Because he isn’t in a dirty squat with his parents’ murderer; he’s pretending he’s in Pepper’s beautiful Kinfolk loft with its rosemary candles and biodynamic pinot noir. 

But it’s also different because the mouth around his cock relaxes as it moves, keeps a soft jaw and patient tongue. There is sometime  _ savoring _ in it, something relaxed, relieved, assured in each stroke, each indrawn rush of air, each swallow. 

It is so different that pretending turns easy. He pretends that he knelt on Pepper’s yoga mat, caught her face in his hands, pressed his cock against her trembling abdominal muscles, kissed her long enough that she relaxed out of her workout, into his arms. His orgasm surprises him, spreads through him like a deep sigh. 

When he opens his eyes--he doesn’t remember closing them--Pepper’s off the mat, out of his viewfinder. CNN flickers on the flatscreen, but she’s not watching. She’s gone. 

When Tony finally looks down at Barnes, the other man has this expression that Tony can  _ feel _ himself wearing; he matches that misery muscle for muscle, line for line.

He opens the visor. “So.” It's the cold air that makes his voice hoarse. Nothing else. “Who were  _ you _ pretending to fuck?”

Barnes wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, leaving a shining streak of spit and come on his gore-tex glove. His smile, when it comes, is exactly the kind of smile you’d expect from someone familiar with wire garrotes. For half a breath, Tony thinks he actually might answer. Then he’s gone, over the railing and into midnight Manhattan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An update! At last!
> 
> Thanks to [lemonlashes](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lemonlashes/pseuds/lemonlashes), [Starlingthefool](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Starlingthefool/pseuds/Starlingthefool), and Kellan, who will some day be on Ao3 when he gets his shit together to request a username. The emotionally devastating robo-fly is their fault/contribution.


End file.
